Two cheetah cubs delivered by emergency cesarean section last month looked healthy and painfully cute last week when they were transported to Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian National Zoo. The pair will spend the summer being hand-raised by zoo staff, being bottle-fed every few hours in an effort to keep them in fine fettle and generally adorable. The Zoo has even set up a squee-inducing flickr account for the cubs (we've picked out a few and featured them below, click for hi-res), which it will use to document their growth in the weeks leading up to their public debut later this summer.

"There are now two new genetically valuable cubs in a population that so desperately needs them," said veterinarian Copper Aitken-Palmer, who delivered the cubs. "So this is really a success for this struggling species."